[E.M.Supreme] Chapter 8 – Duty and Sacrifice

Smith grunted as his feet touched the warped stone at the bottom of the hole they had found. 

Heat blasted back at him the second he had broken through whatever barrier was preventing its escape. Something massive had happened here. 

It was dark and hard to see, but even a blind person would have noticed the pockets of still red glowing stone and how the warping looked. All indicating it had been melted into volcanic lava, pooling around,  and then solidified as the heat was drained away. Signs of glass like substance and maybe crystals of various mana levels seemed like a probable option as well. 

This is worse than we expected. More than a dragon losing control and going supernova, this is a controlled version…

Smith had been the last one to enter, the rest were already spread out and investigating the entire area. The commander, Keith, and Rob were in the center, going over the way the lava had been flowing and how it was centralized further in to pinpoint where the attack had started from. 

The Commander was giving them important lessons. 

Lessons that would save their lives one day.

Pilous, on the other hand, did as he usually did. Wandering at the edges. Studying areas no one would have made an attempt to look through in the usual investigation process. The strange man was at the very furthest wall, touching the stone there with a hand and eyes closed. 

Smith… trusted him to figure something out. 

The Commander didn’t like to say it out loud, but he did too.

“Pilous,” Commander Malor shouted as he looked up from the second lesson he was giving the two youngins. “Get over here. Stick to formation and stop straying so far away from the group.” Then he turned back around and continued with the other knights, showing them the lack of certain particles in the air showing whatever had been attacked by the controlled dragon supernova had somehow not only survived, but dodged the attack completely. 

The only signs of something dying were necromantic dark mana that lingered at the very edges. 

“–either they were level five each or the dragon’s attack was powerful enough to force much of the energy the three skeletons let out into its own signature. At that level, even the impossible is possible. Main reason why we carry these group arrays and have such stringent rules on battling anything above level 85. Helps keep idiots like the two of you alive long enough to maybe one day be special like your awesome commander–”

Smith zoned him out once he heard Malor start praising himself and laughing like an idiot. 

He, instead, turned to look back at Pilous. 

The man had moved from his spot and was standing before another wall, this one was covered with more ash than the overs. 

Pilous put a finger on the wall and then swiped down in a vertical line. 

What is he doing now?

Then another horizontal line. 

Then lastly another vertical line that looked oddly shaped like a–

“God, no…” Smith saw it a second before the Commander did. Kieth and Rob hadn’t noticed at all. 

T-That’s a dungeon gate.

Smith ran over to stand directly next to Pilous. He wiped and cleaned all the black ash off of the doorway to expose it entirely. 

“Fuck,” Commander Malor said as he hurried next to them. “How’d the dungeon gateway not shatter…?” the silence answered him before he could say anything else.

Smith, Pilous, and Malor all understood well enough what it meant for their situation now. 

Any dungeon below level 60 would have shattered or at the very least had significant damage that the main core would not have been able to repair without destroying itself in the process. If the magnitude of what they suspected happened here was correct. Not enough mana within it would have been available to stand so staunchly. 

Level 60 was the best case scenario.

Smith looked back toward Keith and Rob, hoping that one of them would somehow make it out alive being at level 65 themselves.

The rest of them were all level 79 and haven’t made a breakthrough to the next realm just yet. 

Commander Malor was the closest between them. “Smith. Test the level and type of dungeon. We can’t go in blind.”

“Yes, Sir.” Smith said as he prepared himself.

He pulled out an obsidian stone that had been in his ring spatial pocket then let the mana within his core enter in a specific circular pattern to activate it. It began to glow a bright white, losing all of its darkness. 

Smith put it on the dungeon gateway and waited for its final verdict. 

A few moments later a word appeared on it. 

Tower Dungeon

Undead Type

Dungeon Grade - RED L3

Level 79

Last opened - Nine Hours and Twenty One Minutes Ago

Smith took a long breath. “Tower dungeon, Undead…”

“Hurry up, Smith. Stop keeping us in suspense already. What level–” the Commander tried to smile and lighten the mood. It did not work.

“–level 79. Red L3. Last opened within ten hours.”

“It’s about to break,” Commander Malor cursed under his breath. “The dragon must have caused it to go wild. The timing sounds about right too.”

“Dragon?” Pilous chimed in. 

“What else could it be?” Keith said as he and Rob finally joined them. His eyes burned with righteous, bright naivety. “Nothing else can do all this unless we are dealing with a Golden Classer. Are we dealing with a Golden Classer? Wouldn’t that all make us earn nobility titles if we can bring one in? I heard that the last knight to do it was elevated to a Marquis that day by the Royal family.”

Smith laughed and the others joined him. Rob and Keith participated a few seconds late, though utterly confused about what they were laughing about. 

Having someone grounded enough to crack jokes like that made their squad all the better. Even if it was tinged with the naivety of a genius young man with very little in the way of real experiences out in the world. The last Golden Classer had razed half the kingdom before it had been put down. Ignatius the Titan made a name for himself by being the blade that decapitated the calamity, but what is usually left out was that the legend was level 125. 

A power house far beyond anything anyone of them could ever dream of.

Yet, Keith’s words had done their job and melted the tension in the room and allowed them the freedom to think and plan with clear minds. 

Then again, none of them would have wavered before the suspected dragon.

Sacrifice was their calling.

Duty the cloaks that identified them.

Their sworn oaths to serve what drove them.

Whatever had entered this dungeon would find its death to the Royal blades. Whether it was them or another group in the future.

Commander Malor gave each one a nod then flung the gateway open. 

They stepped into the inky darkness.